the endless in-between
by TheMysteryReviewer3624
Summary: When he left, he left a hole in them. Two of our heroes take a moment to talk about it.


AN: So… this happened. All my Naruto fics seem to end up being angsty oneshots. This fic takes place at some indefinite point between the start of Shippuuden and the Fourth Shinobi War, and is probably vaguely AU. Title from Imogen Heap's song "Wait It Out".

Disclaimer: If I owned it… I'd probably still be writing fic for it, actually. But yeah, I don't own anything.

* * *

When Sakura leaves the Hokage's office, she walks at a reasonable pace, but she gets quicker as she goes until eventually she's walking like a medic-nin in a hurry, never running but so fast she might as well be. She heads for the Hokage monument. Naruto follows at a distance: he thinks his company might not be appreciated just at this moment. When he reaches her, sitting on top of the monument, her shoulders are shaking infinitesimally. She's grown better at suppressing bodily reactions like that, but Naruto has known her for long enough to be able to tell.

"Hey," he says, walking slowly over and sitting down next to her. "You OK?"

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and moves her head in a noncommittal response. Naruto isn't usually good at staying quiet around others, but for her he tries. Besides, the atmosphere here is heavy with melancholy. Anything he could say would sound small and inadequate.

"Sometimes I wonder why we do this," she says at last, in a voice that shakes only a little. She sounds so tired. (She sounds heartbroken, but not by someone else: by herself.) "Why we keep chasing after him, even after everything."

Naruto shifts closer to her. "Ah, well, you know that guy," he says, with a cheerfulness drawn up from a well somewhere very deep in him, a well of something that isn't cheerfulness at all. It's been getting harder to draw upon it, these days. "He might seem cool, but he's pretty stupid, right? He needs us around to keep him out of trouble, he's not good at being by himself."

"I _know_," she agrees, hanging her head. There's the echo of something almost a sob in her voice. Naruto knows she won't ever let it become real tears: the Sakura of now would do anything to avoid crying. Sometimes he wonders what he'd say to the Sakura of then, if he met her now, if he'd try to show her that you can cry without being helpless. She had the opposite lesson taught her all too well.

"I know he does," she goes on. "I just – there's only so long anyone can go rogue before they're counted as an enemy, especially _him_. He must know that, he must have _known_ he'd be ranging himself against Konoha – god, _why_ did he have to leave, that _idiot_ –" The almost-sob is growing louder. "And then, every time I think that, I remember what he was like back then and I _can't_ blame him. You remember. What his brother did to him, that – he was never going to be OK, ever, was he? He was – it changed him."

"Yeah," Naruto says softly. "Yeah, it did." _He was – _He can hear the words she doesn't say. _Damaged_. No, that's understatement. _Broken._

Sakura lets out a breath that might be a laugh, if it didn't sound so sad. "That _idiot_," she mutters. "God, I can't – I can't choose him over Konoha, and yet – I can't not choose him. What is that? It's not love. I feel like I'm tied to him –" Her hand finds Naruto's, and their hands entwine. She told Naruto once that he had a higher body temperature than most people. If a warm hand comforts her a little – well, Naruto hopes it does. At least it would mean there's something he can do.

(He understands that feeling, of being tied to Sasuke, all too well. Only with him – it's like his lungs are Sasuke's lungs, like Sasuke's veins are his, like if you cut Sasuke Naruto will bleed. And if Naruto dies, Sasuke's heart will fail. If Naruto gives up, Sasuke will fall.)

"Tsunade-shishou was talking to me about it, back there," she says, very quietly. "She said she needed to know if I was prepared for what would happen if the Council decided to push the issue. And she said I needed to figure out just how I felt about him, and why. I just –" She gestures helplessly with her free hand. "It's because I couldn't fix him, you know? That's it, or part of it, anyway. He was so – _broken_, and I was supposed to be able to fix him, because that's how it fucking _works_ –" Her voice is growing louder. She sounds as if it hurts her, hurts her throat and mouth, to make the words. "So when he left, I thought it was because I failed. You know? I thought it was because it was my _job_ to fix him, and I failed. Even now, I still – I can't stop feeling like that. So I'm tied to him. That's not love, it's, it's – it's _guilt_ –"

She twitches as if she's about to turn and lean her head on his shoulder, but then she shakes her head, and grips his hand tighter. If her eyes are a little wet, Naruto decides he can't see anything of the kind.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah." Then, shifting closer to her: "You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

"Of course I know that!" she snaps back. Almost as soon as she's said it her face falls, and her voice softens. "Sorry. But it doesn't help to know that. I still feel the same way. And you're one to talk, Mr I'll-Bring-Him-Back-No-Matter-What." She smiles, a little sadly, to soften the words.

"Eh?" Naruto says, with only half-genuine bewilderment: he does have some idea what she's talking about, but it comes perilously close to the things in the back of his mind that he doesn't touch.

She shrugs. "It's like he's you, or part of you, anyway. I get it, you know? You keep saying you can't become Hokage if you can't save him, and it's because if you don't save him, then even if you do become Hokage, you'll just – he'll always be out there. Haunting you, like the ghost of a limb. Like there's a part of you that still hasn't been saved, like without him you're still a child in the dark." She lets out another of those soft laugh-like breaths. "God, I don't know what I'm saying. You get what I mean, though, right?"

Naruto nods, briefly unable to speak. "Yeah," he says eventually. "I think you hit the nail on the head there." He squeezes her hand, needing to feel some kind of anchor for a moment. She doesn't say anything. "It's just…" He trails off for a moment. "I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened, back then. If I'd just taken one minute to think of what he was going through. I mean, he was an ass back then, no question, but if I'd looked outside our rivalry for just one minute –" Sakura holds his hand tighter as he sighs. "I know I didn't show much sympathy when it was, what's his name, Inari, back in Wave, but – I think I might know better now. Yeah, sure, you shouldn't mope over the past forever, but sometimes you do need help. And _comfort_. Some time to recover, instead of just people pushing you onwards. I wish I'd known that then."

"You were dealing with your own stuff then," Sakura says comfortingly. "I think that was how you coped, by telling yourself you had to keep going and you didn't need comfort. Kind of like him, actually, that way. Except you were maybe a bit healthier because you wanted to get to the future. He wanted to get back to the past." Naruto shares a glance with her and knows they're both seeing the same thing, really: two boys, trying and failing to cope, broken into strange awkward shapes by a village that never really cared enough. It's heart-breaking. "And I had my own worries, then, too. We were all just kids, trying to cope with all these problems on our own – god, it's no wonder our team was such a train wreck."

Naruto actually does laugh a little at that, because it's either laugh or cry. "It's the might-have-beens, though, isn't it," Sakura goes on, quieter now. "That's what kills you. All the things that might have been."

Naruto nods. "Yeah, that's it," he says. "You think about – what if I'd been able to help him, what if someone had seen earlier – what if someone had just _seen_, what his problem was, and how to help him. What if either of us had known what to do for him. I just wonder –" He gets up and starts to pace, driven by restlessness. "If he'd stayed longer, could we have maybe convinced him not to be such an ass? Could I have stopped trading insults with him long enough for us to actually become _friends_, instead of – whatever we were – could he have started looking at us and actually seeing _us_, not – I don't know – some, some subpar replacement for his _family_ or whatever –" He doesn't realise his voice has risen until Sakura gets up to stand by him.

"Hey," she says gently. "I know. That's the worst part of it, the wondering –" She breaks off, and they stand in silence for a while.

At last Naruto speaks again. "Even underneath all of that," he says, feeling the thought form as he says it, "even underneath all the, the guilt and the wondering and the being tied to him – I still want to bring him back. You know?"

Sakura smiles absently, sad eyes far away, as she nods. "Yeah. I want to bring him back here. That idiot, god, I swear I'll drag him back here if we have to – so long as we've got him here with us. So we can keep him from hurting himself any more." She takes Naruto's hand again. "I said it was guilt, and it is, but – I love him, too. And so do you." She says it like a secret. "We both love him, that's why. So much."

Naruto tries to smile in agreement, and can't. "I want him _back_," he says, heavy and desperate, and this time he's the one with a sob in his voice.

Sakura hugs him, and he holds onto her, and even though he's taller than her now, her arms feel like home. Like a haven they're allowed to have, for now.


End file.
